'Shoot - To - Kill' Old Debate for U.K. Forces

[maddezmom]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) -- When London police killed an innocent Brazilian in a hunt for suicide bombers, they reopened a ''shoot-to-kill'' debate that for decades haunted British efforts to combat the Irish Republican Army.

Throughout the 1980s, undercover police and soldiers repeatedly ambushed IRA units -- and killed both unarmed IRA members and civilians in the process. Those events inspired decades of legal action and international criticism, particularly from Irish Americans, who argued that deadly force was not justified.

Now, as then, the questions bedeviling the British government and their security forces are twofold: When is it defensible, legally and morally, to shoot a suspected terrorist? And what should the punishment be when an operation goes too far?

British authorities have denied ever sanctioning a ''shoot-to-kill'' policy in their campaign against the IRA, which killed 1,800 people and repeatedly bombed towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland before calling a cease-fire in 1997.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Shoot-to-Kill.html

[rasputin1952]

1. When I was in the Army, you had better have a damn good reason

for using deadly force; and if you did, you first attempted to disable the individual with a round before going for a kill shot.

The reasoning behind this was remarkably simple: You wanted the perpetrator alive so you could get answers/info. This is not to say deadly force was not justified in some instances, but it takes a degree of intelligence to know when to use it. In this case, from what I have read, there were at least 5 other ways to deal with the situation, before head shots were used. If someone felt that the use of firearms was warranted, a shot to the femur most certainly would have incapacitated this individual. I'm not even sure if a warning shot was fired, in almost every case where an individual is not a severe threat, a warning shot will advise him/her that you are serious, and the next shot will be at them.

I made sure, as an NCO, that my guards knew it was imperative that the regulations were followed to a 'T'. One would think a professional organization, like a police force, would have the same sense.

Such is the power of unrestrained fear...even those who should know better, lose what sense they possess; to add to the horror, there are those who would justify this and other acts, as 'protection'...right up to the point where they become the target...:(